Bucks County Playhouse presents stage version of Stephen King's 'Misery'

Johanna Day portrays Annie Wilkes, the role that won Kathy Bates an Oscar for her performance in the screen version of Stephen King's novel "Misery," in the stage version of the story at the Bucks County Playhouse.Joseph Marazullo/WENN

Celebrities look at their fans in various ways, ranging from the grateful Charley Pride, who said, “Fans are what make a performer, and I’ve always taken them seriously,” to the dismissive Bob Dylan, who asked, “What good are fans? You can’t eat applause for breakfast.”

The prolific novelist Stephen King possibly presented the most harrowing analysis of a celebrity/fan relationship in his 1987 best-seller “Misery,” a novel whose latest stage adaptation is having its world premiere starting tomorrow at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pa., for a run through Dec. 8.

This stage version is by William Goldman, who adapted King’s novel for its Oscar-winning screen version in 1990, and it scales down the cast even further than his screenplay did. The story is now about only three characters: a best-selling novelist named Paul Sheldon, a reclusive psychopath who calls herself his biggest fan, and an inquisitive policeman who investigates Sheldon’s disappearance.

“It’s a great honor to work with two-time Oscar-winner William Goldman,” says director Will Frears, “especially since this is his first stage play of this century, although he worked on three plays for Broadway in the previous century before heading out to Hollywood, where his screenplays include ‘The Stepford Wives,’ ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,’ ‘The Princess Bride’ and ‘All the President’s Men.’ This has been an exciting script to work on since it’s a real study in contrasts.”

The story starts with an auto accident during a blizzard in Colorado involving Sheldon (played by Daniel Gerroll) who is seriously injured but is rescued from the crash scene by Annie Wilkes (played by Johanna Day), a former nurse, who recognizes her favorite author from his pictures on the dust jackets of a popular series of Victorian romances.
They feature a heroine named Misery Chastain, who is Annie’s favorite literary character.

During Sheldon’s slow recovery at Annie’s isolated home, they discuss his literary philosophies and career goals, and Sheldon makes the mistake of telling Annie that he has killed off Misery in his latest, only recently finished novel. She becomes irate and keeps him hostage until he writes another novel bringing Misery back to life.

The weakened Sheldon fears for his life and does what she demands.

Meanwhile, Sheldon’s disappearance is being investigated by a local sheriff named Buster (James DeMarse), but Buster’s interference might allow Sheldon to escape before he can meet Annie’s demands, and she won’t let that happen.

Frears doesn’t find the story of Annie’s identification with Sheldon’s Victorian heroine, a beautiful young woman totally unlike herself, difficult to understand.

“Look at the way so many people identify with Harry Potter characters or the people in any popular TV series,” Frears says. “Writers give people an escape, a liberating change from what they already know. Why wouldn’t this lonely woman with a good many skeletons in her closest find this romantic character with adventures that always work out in her favor eventually more exciting that her own troubled life?”

“It’s a psychological pas de deux with moments of great calm alternating with outbursts of incredible violence,” Frears adds. “Sheldon spends much of the play in bed or in a wheelchair planning his escape from a possessed woman whom, he believes, is quite capable of murdering him if she doesn’t get what she wants. She wants to keep going that fantasy he’s so good at creating, to keep alive all her romantic illusions of better things. It’s a kind of cat and mouse game that is very exciting.”

Cast as Annie, a role that won an Oscar for actress Kathy Bates, is Johanna Day, who isn’t worried that she doesn’t have Bates’ dominating physical presence.

“I am tall, but Annie’s power isn’t in her height or size,” Day says. “It’s her single-mindedness that gives her power. She has tunnel vision; she sees things only as black and white.

“That level of intensity can be terrifying, and, like most people, Sheldon has very little experience in how to deal with it. He makes some very costly and painful mistakes finding out.”

Day’s work in the Broadway production of David Auburn’s “Proof” won her a Tony Award nomination in 2001.

Neither Frears nor Day has been at Bucks County Playhouse before, although both have been hearing about its history from Ann Roth, the show’s award-winning costume designer, who got her professional start there.

Roth has been relating tales of the playhouse’s glorious past during rehearsals in New York. Others on the production team are David Korins (sets), Darron West (sound), David Weiner (lighting), Michael Freidman (score), Gregory Mech (special effects) and Rick Sordelet (fight direction).

Asked if this production, sponsored by Warner Brothers’ Theatre Ventures, will be heading elsewhere, Frears says, “That would be nice, but it isn’t what we’re all working so hard for. We just want to give this new work the best presentation possible here and now.”